DOCONENT RISUNE

ED 103 943 CS 201 868

AUTHOR Wagner, Betty JaneTITLE Blood and Gore& Fens and Fears: "Beowulf" Battles the

Dale-Chall Monster.PUB DATE Nov 74NOTE 21p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the

Midwest Modern Language Association, November,1974

EDRS PRICE MF-$0.76 RC-$1.58 PLUS POSTAGEDESCRIPTORS Childrens Books; *Childrens Literature; Elementary

Education; *Literary Criticism; *Textbook Content;Textbook Evaluation; Textbook Preparation;*Textbooks; Word Lists

IDENTIFIERS -*Beowulf

ABSTRACTUnfortunately, textbooks of the elementary and junior

high school levels receive very little of the honest, criticalevaluation which is given trade books in children's literature. Onevivid example of this fact was seen in the recent arduous butsuccessful attempt to include "Beowulf' in a fourth-grade literaturetext which was being compiled. That a clear, simple retelling of"Beowulf" is an especially appropriate and significant experience fora nine year old was ignored by elementary education editorsconsidering the selection. The editors instead preferred to focus onbackground information, violence in the tale, word choice,comprehension questions, and reading rules. Wine year olds may bereluctant to learn facts about a 1500-year-old major piece ofAuglo-Saxon literature, but they have difficulty in resisting thelure of the "Beowulf" monsters. (JM)

U.S. DEPARTMENT Of HEALTN.EDUCATION A WELPARENATIONAL INSTITUTE OP

EDUCATIONTN'S DOCUMENT WAS SEEN REPRODUCE° EXACTLY AS RCCEIVEO FROMTHE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGIN.*TING IT. POINTS Of VIEW OR OPINIONSSTATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPPESENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OFEDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY.

BLOW AND Ong, MIS AND MAIMBROW BMWS ISE 1141X-GIALL ?ENS=

Betty Jane Wagner

PERMISSION TO THIS COPY-RIGHTED MATERIAL r 4S BEEN GRANTED BY

Bette Jane Wagner

TO ERIC AND OftcANZATiONr. OPERATINGUNDER AGREEMENTS MTH THE NATIONAL IN-

STITUTE Of EDUCATION FURTHER REPRO-DUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYSTEM RE-QUIRES PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT

OWNER

One .cannot but velem* the humanistic interchange of ideas that are

increasingly informing the field of literature for children. This is reflected

in regular sessions of recent Modern Language Association meetings and the in-

creasing number of fine published articles. In this enlightened climate us

can more effectively sharpen our critical criteria as me von* together to pre-

serve the next generation's birthright to art embodied in lords. Librarians*

teachers, and others responsible for the purchase of trade books for children

have richer resources to help them than ever before.

Rover critics have concentrated only on tracks books, and in

so thing they have ignored the needs of the vast majority of young madam in

our culture 'oho cb not have access to enough good trade books. Tihy is this?

It is because for most children, literature is sifted through the school sieve.

It is this process that breaks the whole into parts, measures the amounts care-

fully* tightly sequences the minutiae, and then gives them to the child, testing

him (and at one remove the teacher also) by asking him to spit back the bits

as they have been sifted to him, but selcbm simply to eat the whole and grow.

The Nobles is compounded by the fact that the taboo-lifting and enlightened

risk-taking that has characterised children's trade book publishing in the last

decade has yet to bavo a widespread impact on the elementary editors in thebo

narrow offices of the textbook divisions of the major publishing houses. The

U0 outcries of parents such as those in Kanawha County, Virginia, might make one

think otherwise, that indeed moat modern textbooks are substantially different

44. from their predeoessors, but in actual fact only a few new elementary aid junior

lariguage arts or reading programs are of high literary quality, and even the few

that are are in danger of being lost because some of the publishers are afraid

to be identified with a textbook series that is perceived in some quarters to be

controversial. That is likely to happen is that even textbook editors who have

taken some risks in the past few years will respond to pressure and decide to

publish nothing that might offend even the most illiterate or bigoted of parents.

If this happens, it will be in part because there is no countervailing humanising

climate which will praise them for their courage when they' do exhibit it.

The hard fact is that textbooks receive very little honest, critical evalua-

tion, and without this they are more subject to pressures from the least informed

and most vocal critics than trade books are. Most persons outside the education

profession assume the worst about textbooks and ignore the problems leaving the

textbook editors at the mercy of frightened and passionate critics. Children's

textbooks are too influential to be left to this fate. They need rather to be

subjected to the same rigorous criticism that has becalm a part of the milieu

into which children's trade books are dropped. The purpose of this paper is to

help correct this imbalance in critical attention.

I am going to use my recent experience with a group of elementary' textbook

editors at one of the largest publishing houses in the country to illustrate

the thesis that these editors operate on a different set of assumptions than

their counterparts in the trade divisions, and this fact accounts in large pert

for the poor literary qualitor of much of their output. I will show how not a

new or controversial piece of literature, one we might expect to be avoided by

a textbook publisher, but the oldest classic in our language, namely,

fared at the "el -ed" desk« It all began when a couple of co-editors and I set

about to pit together an anthology of legends for fourth to sixth graders as

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part of a language arta and reading prograM; The contract had been signed; the

pro feat was =daring. We were assured our task was to put together the best col-

lection of legends in could find. I was curious eacrut what versions of the old

story of Beowulf were available in other reading or literature textbooks, so I

started to look. To my amazement! Beowulf was not in any of the recently pub-

lished reading textbooks fbr children under twelve. I finally found a short

passage from it buried In a historical survey of the English lagmage for fourth

graders, but it was clearly only illustrative material as I shall later show.

By this time I was determined that our book should have a Beowulf story.

I began by reading through all the translations or retellings of Beowulf

for children. Most were not as gripping as adult translations, all of which I

rejected because although they were more strict, they included the poet's strug-

gles with Christianitr and paganism. These I felt strayed too far from the main

tale and would detract from it for today's children. That I was locking for

was a forthright retelling that was close to the spirit of the original. I

found it in Dorothy Hosford's version published in the now out-of-print & His

Own Elea, the Battles of Beowulf.1 Unlibe the elaborate retelling by Rosemary

Sutcliff2 and others lilac hers,Hosfordfs diction is simple and effective. She

captures the feel of Anglo-Saxon alliteration as in the line, "He would Alin

have fled to his fastness, to that den of devils,n3or in kennings such as nbattle..

boast." As in her powerful Thwider of the adds she captures the Norse sense of

doom. Hosford gives not a hint of modern man, but instead a staunch, fearless

hero of old.

However, when I found Robert Niels retelling4 I chose it instead. For one

thing his monsters are far grislier than hers. He went back and into the tale

to create a new thing which is at once uncanny and dangerous. He captures the

primitive force of the tale. Like Hosford, he -respects the value of understatement,

a characteristic of Norse folk tale and mythology which is the stark and spare

sinew of primitive Germanic poetry.

Although the Nye retelling is not in any sense a strict translation, we

decided it did not seriously violate the spirit of the original poem. J. R. R.

Tolkien made the case that the poet who wrote Heave" lf was a Christian who wanted

to recapture the power of a creed that by that time had vanished. In our age

Robert Nye is thoroughly a modern man with a spirit not given to projecting heroes,

and yet, like the Peovulf poet, he longs for the clarity of an age now ancient.

In his retelling is a blending cf modern and primitive elements. In it I found

the evocative, rhythmical prose, vivid image, and tense drama I was seeking.

This version has not mere novelty, but that originality that has its birth in

the truth as one person seee it, ',Each is never quite the same as anyone else's

truth. Nye's tale is a fusion of his experience., observation, and imagination.

Here is a man writing with obvious delight.

This is not to say the Nye retelling is without flaws, however. Some of

the mourn complexity of character is at odds with the simplicity of the old epic.

One part of the book that just cbesn't work is the point at which he eats the

witch's apples to symbolize that he is taking the bad into himself to recognize

his own badness. Tlv biggest problem in Nye's book is the final battle with the

dragon for which, true to his name, he uses bees to help him conquer his last

enemy. This solution is merely clever, and the force of the strugggle is lost.

Also Nye's description of the burial of Beowulf at the end of the book seems

abrupt and weak; it is as if Nye ran out of steam.

. However, the excerpt I chose BearalfIs battle with Grendel to include

in the legends anthology had none of these flaws. Taus I set about to make available

in textbook form for school children vhat was already on the shelves of libraries

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and bookstores. What I did not realize was that I would face a series of battles,

none of Whidh, as far as I know, were encountered by.Nye when he first published

his Beowulf as a children's trade book with Hill and Wang in 1968.

My first problem was to make a case for Beowulf as an appropriate and not

too mature a tale for a nine-year-old reader ant then to defend Nye's particularly

evocative and vivit retelling. My expereinces are illustrative of the fact that

textbook editors are far more cautious and didactic than trade book editors.

Thadosto J. R. R. Tolkients watershed critique of 19366 and the critics

who follosed his lead, I do not need to made a case for Beowulf as a good and

moving poem. Tblkien worked to rescue Beowulf from the scholars who had pre-

ceded him and had made Beowulf a quarry for historians and philologists

diggers who had left a cloud of deist he neatly cleared away, forcing all sub-

sequent critics to look at the poem itself and to value its power. My goal is

similar)only the cloud I want to Clear away is a pedagogical, not a critical one.

I firmly believe that a clear, simple retelling of Beowulf is an especially

appropriate and significant experience for a child as young as nine. It has

adventures; a young child hungers for these. Beowulf's battles with Grendel,

Grendel's mother, and the dragon are simple, good-vs.-evil encounters full of

drama, wonder and strength. In Beowulf a child finds the qualities inherent in

the fresh, first-seeing of these Germanic tribes in whose language this tale was

first told. The story is satisfying. In the clear triumph of good there is joy,

but not the simple joy of a fairy-tale ending, for in Beowulf it isn't the triumph

but his courage that matters. Courage is personified in this heroic character.

Through his boastful words and brave deeds, a child sees valor in action and thus

learns what it is. There is something there that is tough and zeal. The pace is

slow; the terror, profound; the telling, terse.

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OP

Beowulf has dignity. Within the frame of the deaths of honored heroes, Scyld

at the beginning and Beowulf at the end, is a tale that gives significance to a

man's life, making that far-off scene vivid and symbolic. Here is a story close to

the heart of the matter, material distant in time and place into which the reader

can project his fears and longings. A child's mind can grasp with ease the simple

and positive ninth century code of pride and courage in the face of danger; this is

heightened experience at its best.

Children have not the objectivity nor the abstract concepts to enable them to

think explicitly about qualities or ideas. As James Moffett pointed out, they

have to depend on narrative to do the work that as adults they will be able to do

with categories, gencalizations, analogies, and theories. Nine-year-olds have

trouble "discus3ing" courage; they have no trouble acting it out or identifying

with a hero who is brave. In other words, in Beowulf we see what courage is before

we learn to call it that.

Another limitation of immature readers is the fact that they cannot acknow-

ledge, even to themselves, much of their thought and feeling because it is too

powerful. Simples heightened characters give them visible vessels into thich

to project that dangerous psychic material and deal with it. Maturity involves a

movement from projection into the distant in time and place to the personal acknowl-

edgement of emotional complexity within ourselves. For example, it is much easier

to acknowledge hatred when the hated object is clearly a monster. A child's baby

brother may look and act and smell like an ugly monster, but if the child tries to

harm that baby, the vengenr,cs of his mother monster can be a terror indeed. A

young child brings to the battle with Grendel's mother a passion born of frustration;

his own mother he dare not kill, and he knows it.

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When a person is frightened or frustrated he finds in repeating his story a

source of relief. Richard Wilbur in his poem "Beowulf" described the need of a

terrified people to repeat their tales:

but in all was a vengeance and a strain,

Because they lived in a land of daily harm.

And they said the same things again and again.

It was a chile country, and a child,

Grown monstrous., so besieged them in the night

That all their daytimes were a dream of fright

That it would come and own them to the bone.?

Dreams of the night cry for tales of the day, and young dreamers hunger for the

ancient wisdom in Beowulf; it is especially appropriate material for young readers.

'Suppose we make a case for a piece of literature as appropriate for children

and a textbook publisher accepts it. What happens to it then at the "el -u3" desk?

It faces at least six probable fates: One, it may be buried in information about

the piece; two, it may be shunted off to the desks of editors of books for older

students on the grounds that they, and not younger children, would "understand" it;

three, it may be presented with a plethora of. "comprehension" questions to plague

the reader; four, it may be surrounded by exhortations to the reader to pay

attention to it; five, it may be bowdlerized because of its content or diction;

or, six, it may be "simplified" or even eliminated on the basis of the Dale-Chall

formula. If I had not recently had to go to battle to avoid most of these fates

for literature I wanted to include in elementary reading textbooks, I would not be

sure of myself in presenting this thesis. Unfortunately, I think my experience is

fairly typical of writers and anthologizers who work with elementary textbook

editors, and this is why I share it with you.

For a good example of burying Beowulf in information, let's look at the only

excerpt from Beowulf that I found in a reading or language textbook for children

under twelve. This excerpt is in Scott Foresman's fourth-grade Language and How to

8

Use 8 an English language book. What this book has is a short condense-

tion of the fight with GrIndel taken from Gladys Schmitt's The Heroic Deeds of

Beowulf. This excerpt is clearly not presented as literature, but as an illustra-

tion of what the authors are presenting: a lot Of information about the beginnings

of the English language. Now, I am not saying that historical information is

not important. I know that the presentation of information is often a textbook's

raison d'atre. What concerns me is the all too frequent substitution of informar

lion about for experience with literature. No nine-year-OM I know is hungry

to hear that Beowulf is the major piece of Anglo -Saxon literature written in a

language spoken 1500 years ago, but few children can resist the lure of those

monsters. In Language and Hew to Use It, a one-page excerpt from Beowulf is.preceded by three and a half pages of information about this literature and

the language it was written in, and is followed by a set of comprehension

questions. What the child learns is this: Beowulf is something important to

learn about, something he or she should know, something the teacher values

and that he better learn to value as will. Gone is the Beowulf who, as

Tolkien put it, "must ever call with a profound appeal -- until the dragon

comes."9 For the newly literate, Beowmlf has been reduced to a snippit and

buried in a pit of information.

Textbooks like Language and How to Use It cater to those Tblkien characterizes

as "seeking knowledge about, and ready-made judgments upon, works which they

have not the time, nor (often enough) the desire, to know at first hand."1°

Adults tend to be the ones who seek knowledge, children, on the other hand,

tend to bring time -- time to savor, to live through over and over, and to

respond to with much more than their minds. They come with antenna stretched

out for experience, feelers which can be crushed by a heavy load of informa-

tion.

9

Not only has Beowulf fared badly; even dragons have not withstood pedagogy.

Now a dragon is a formidable thing, not easy to destroy. The only way to vanquish

him is to present him not in a tale, but as information. For example, in Harper &

Row's Coming to Crossroads children learn:

Stories of dragons can be found in nearly every part of the

world, but their appearance and temperament differ greatly...

The dragon described in European literature was usually evil.

He looked somewhat like a huge scaly lizard. Although he had

wings, he seldom flew.ti

No earth rumbles at his step; no pals reader quails; this dragon has been laid

out as just another dull something that must be learned.

Burying Beowulf and dragons under information about them is not the only or even

the worst thing that happens at the textbook editor's desk, however. Epic literature

even more frequently gets set aside until the child is older and supposedly more

ready to respond. When I was trying to get Beowulf and other material into

anthologies for fourth graders, I engaged in a three-year correspondence with a

series of editors; the complexity of this correspondence I can never hope to

recreate for you. I remember a stea4y stream of letters beginning: "You

don't know mes but I am the new editor of your legends book. 1111 you kindly

bring me up-to-date on your concern about.

Once I brought the new editor up-to-dates the rejections began again.

One editor admonished me that Beowulf would not be suitable for children of this age

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because they would not be able to understand the symbolism involved. Now who

really understands the symbolism of a monster? When the day comes that we under-

stand that monster, the only thing we'll know is this: we are stumbling into its

lair. For stories to work symbolically, a nhild does not need to be old enough

to "understand" or to talk about what the symbols mean. Into his awareness

unbidden and without belabored teaching will stalk a symbol, blatantly belching

its fire of significance.

If Beowulf does get postponed until the child is older, say, in junior high

school, then how does it fare in the textbooks there? At this age children are

supposedly old enough to "understand" the symbolism, and indeed excerpts from

Beowulf do appear in at least four literature anthologies of major publishers12.

The editors are still worried, howeveri in order to be sure that Beowulf gets

understocd, they couch each excerpt in introductory material, comprehension

questions with answers in an overwritten Teacher's Guide, and wooden "applications

to today." I'll give you only a few examples which I assure you are depressingly

typical.

In the Gina junior high textbook, To Turn a Stone, a short retelling of

Beowulf by Dorothy Hosford is followed by questions such as these:

Question: "How do we know that the story of Beowulf is very old?a3

Answer: (in the Teacher's Guide) "The most important clue is the inclusion

of a dragon in the story. Dragons usually appear only in the very old stories."

(What about the Loch Ness monster, or the dragon iri The Hobbit,

Question: "Why does Beowulf insist on fighting the dragon alone?"

Answer: "In those early times, great emphasis was placed on man's achieving

glory before he died." (Is this no longer the case?) "He had courage."14

(It's good that answer was handy in the Teacher's Guide; otherwise he or she might

never have figured that out!)

11

ID another junior high literature anthology, Perception; Themes in Litera-

ture, the excellent retelling of Ian Serraillier's Beowulf is followed by a dull-

witted "CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING" section. :'first, the student is gripped by such

lines as:

or

Thereafter, from dark lake and dripping cavesNight after night over the misty moorCame Grendel, gross and grim, famished for flesh.15

Then Grendel wailed from his sound, his shriek of painRoused the Danes in their hiding and shivered to the stars.L6

Then cornea the application, one of the worst examples of misplaced pedagogy

I have yet to see:

At first the story seems remote from the life we livetoday. But as one's ideas about the story simmer, startlingthoughts bubble to the surface. Many American cities arefaced with the same kind of problems as was Hrothgar's GreatHall, Heorot. Beautiful parks are plagued by roving gangswho torment and rob the people who walk through them.Certain streets are no longer'safe for an individual to walkalone. Perhaps we need a dragon fighter like Beowulf tokill the menaces lurking in the parks and streets of our cities.

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Instead of providing catharsis, this literature is to stir us to action, is

that it? The application of today continues. After the episode of Beowulf killing

Grendel's mother we have this bit of wisdom, ringing with the morality of John

Foster Dulles' foreign policy:

4

Resting from the tremendous fight with Grendel, Beowulfawakes to the news that there is a new monster to be slain,Grendel's mother. Even today this is true - heroes todayfight and kill the dragons called war, poverty, interracialstrife, corruption only to find that they have sprung up inanother spot of the world and must be fought all over again. 10

Perception also has its comprehension questions. Here's one: "Beowulf is

described as 'the mildest and mightiest of men'; is this an unbelievable combination

of traits for a real hero?"19 In the Teacher's Resource Guide, another one

1120obviously written for morons, the teacher is told, "Answers may vary.

12

Another problem for any piece of literature that makes its way into a reading

textbook is that it is likely to be surrounded by heavy-handed advice on how to

improve reading skill. In my vain search for Beowulf in elementary reading text-

books, I came across numerous exhortations for the reader. I can only assume

that the textbook writers fear that children will stop trying to read unless the

process itself is dwelt upon assiduously. Here is a typical advice all in capitals

perhaps to keep the reader awake:

Follow these rules for better reading.1. KEEP YOUR MIND ON WHAT YOU ARE READING.2. KNOW WHY YOU READ.

3. KNOW THE MEANING OF EVERY WORD.

4. READ TO UNDERSTAND RELATIONSHIPS.5. BUILD MENTAL PICTURES AS YOU READ.

6. RECOGNIZE IMPORTANT DETAILS.A/

Most fourth graders prefer real dragons to this and while they are stalking

across the page, the readers do not need to remind themselves to "build mental

pictures." Try to build a "mental picture" of that list of exhortations, if you

will!

My co-editors and I finally convinced our textbook editors that Beowulf was

indeed appropriate for fourth grade children, that we did not want a snippet of

it buried in information nor followed by comprehension questions or exhortations

to read it carefully. What then? Little did I realize that the biggest battle

was still ahead of me, a battle against bowdlerizing the excerpt of Nye's that

I had chosen. This should not have surprised me for bowdlerizing goes hand-

in-handmith heavy didacticism.

My editors did not object to the fact that the Nye retelling is just

that -- a retelling and not a strict translation. That they objected to was

that the Nye version was "particularly gory and particularly explicit in its

language." That it is, I agree. One editor wrote, "In an age when many' of

us are condemning the increasing violence shown on TV and in magazines, I wonder if

we need to add a particularly violent version of Beowulf to the scene." One of

13

rigf coeditors tried to explain Idly clearly fantastic violence could be a powerful

antidote and way of coping with real violence; how a story of the death of a

gruesome, evil monster might: reassure us that right will somehow win and that some

of the evil that lurks about the monster will go with it to its grave. As for

myself, I took very seriously the editor's concern that this was a violent excerpt,

and I proceeded to edit it rather than lose it entirely. The editor also noted that

some of the descriptive material about Unferth was offensive, so, hard-pressed to

get even a bowdlerized version in rather than none at all, I decided to take out of

the Nye version two parts that I divined might be the ones which were the most

unsavory for the editor. I couldn't bring myself to soften the horror of Beowulf's

victory over Grendel, so I left in this:

Grendel shook his arm about and dashed it against thewell. Beowulf, badly bruised, refused to relinquish his hold.When shaking did not work, and banging did not work, Grendeltried jerking his arm. But Beowulf wound his legs around apillar. He took the full force of the monster's pull - and still

. held on.

There was a fearful Snapping of bones and tearing ofsinew and muscles.

Then hot stinking blood fountained everywhere.

Beowulf had pulled Grendel's arm out of its socket:

The monster howled. It was a pandemonium of pain, asthough all the men he had eaten cried out too.22

Then I left out these lines:

He dragged himself along the ivory floor, blood pumpingfrom his wound with each fierce beat of his angry heart, He

knew he must die from loss of blood.4

The rest of the violence remained unchanged, and that deletion alone made

the excerpt sufficiently "unviolent." Clearly it was the gore on the floor, not

the violent act that was offensive.

To mitigate the ugliness of Unferth I cut out this particularly descriptive,

if gross, paragraph about what Unferth did as he waited in Herot that night that

Grendel was to come:

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Unferth began gnawing at his fingernails. They tasted of

dirt and where he had been poking at his bong Unferth hatedthe taste of himself, but he had to have it.44

I left in the lines:

He smiled to himself in the dark. He had stopped drinking.

He was afraid, but his fear fascinated him. His bladdlr ached;he wanted to make water; but he did not dare go out in the nightto do so. He twisted about on the hard, uncomfwipabi.e step. Hecould feel the sweat trickling out of his hair.,'

I wanted to leave in that description because of the way Unferth's fear

functions to heighten the suspense and because this mirrors a sensory experience

common to children. For the editor I decided to omit this description of one

event in the tale that is actually closer to a child's experience than to an

adult's:

Unferth's blood ran cold. He cowered into shadow. He fe)t,4°his own water leaving down his leg, sore and warm and sticky

My edited version with only these three omissions was accepted. It was then

I wrote the editor that it would have been easier for me if I had known beforehand

that it was blood and urination and not violence that worried him. I reminded him

that the edited version of Beowulf was quite as violent es before.

The "reason" most comnonly given for proposing bowdlerizations of excerpts I

tried to get into the anthologies I was doing was that offensive material would not

get by textbook adoption committees, ogres that breathe closely down the necks of

most textbook editors. Excerpts from children's books that had evidently faced no

flLa in the children's trade book offices of, in some cases, even the same

publishing house, were considered controversial material for textbooks.

In the end we won the Beowulf bowdlerizing battle, but no thanks to me and my

efforts to compromise. My two co-editors, fierce, uncompromising men for whom I

have a high regard, simply refused to go along with this watering down (no pun

intended); one of them temporarily quit his association with the publisher; the

other wrote a scathing letter expressing his despair over this event and numerous

15

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others of the same kind:

"I was becoming increasingly excited by the notion that amajor publisher might be willing to take the risk of movinginto new territory in school texts, that something might happenthat would demonstrate to kids that books with titles likeAdventures in Literature might have one or two honest-to-Godadventures instead of the pablum they have come to expect." .

This same co-editor warned the publisher of this fact:

"The trend in selection committees is toward more, notless, teacher power. I think this is happening because it isbecoming increasingly harder to interest kids in books forsomething like the reasons McLuhan suggests, and teachers arenot about to let others select books they cannot use, andbecause people coming into teaching these days have more gutsthan did their counterparts even a decade ago. Yes, jobs arescarce, but this has led to the hiring of tougher peoplecoming out of a generation more apt to rebel to begin with."27

We also reminded the publisher of the fact that there is a widespread dis-

satisfaction with literature textbooks; many teachers are choosing to forget them

altogether and use trade books instead in their classrooms. After a long negotiation,

the publisher backed down; we won our case. The Beowulf excerpt got into our

anthology just as Robert Nye had written it.

Before this final victory, however, there was one more monster to face: the

Dale-Chall teat. Too many literature lovers don't know enough about this testiwhich

is a formula for determining just what grade level a given story or poem is for.

Whatever escapes the net of inappropriate content or language is finally filteriiir

through the Dale-Chall testa to find out which readers are going to have access to

a particular piece of literature.

For young readers the Dale-Chall monster blocks access to the hoard of words

at the base of our civilization. By effecting the pouring-out of black smoke in

the form of dull and stupid limited vocabulary basal readers, readability tests

keep children away from the literature they long for. Little exiles from the land

that never was, they go to books for live wisdom and find only the words of Edgar

Dale's list tied up in short sentences. Dale's list doesn't include words like

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"fen", "bleak", or "sere", but I contend that a young reader of these words in

Nye's retelling doesn't have a problem, even if he can't "define" the words:

The fen was wild and waste. It stretched as far as theeye could see. The sky over 4.was grey. The sun was blackand sere. It was a dead land."

.The child wades fearlessly into that fen in search of Grendel's mothers and Dale and

Chall only keep him out of the gate of the "el-ed" desk.

Edgar Dale and Jeanne S. Chall assumed that short sentences wen; easy and

long sentences were hard. Yet, here's a 51-word sentence from Nye's Beowulf, a

description of Grendel's mother, that I cannot imagine even a four-year-old would

find difficult:

It was shaped like a snake, a snake as black as jet,long and fat and hissing, but it moved across the marshyground faster than any snake that ever was, because it hadtentacles that pulled it through the mud as quick and slickas a knife going through butter. 29

The Dale-Chall formula, first published in the Educational Research Bulletin

in 194830 and revised tea years later, is still used by textbook editors who are

thus relieved of the arduous task of sharpening their own tools of literary

criticism, a task that should be a prerequisite for a position of such widesweeping

a

power. The revised Dale-Chall tests are the easy-to-apply way of making hard

decisions about which children can read what. All you have to do is this: For a

sample of 100 words in a piece of writing, count all those words that are not on

the Dale list, a list made up of words most commonly found in basal readers, and

you come out with the Dale score. Then you count up the number of sentences in

the sample and enter that into the computation. You don't need to think, you

just count and apply the formula. The Dale score is entered on the table from

the left column; the number of sentences is entered from the top, and at the inter-

section of the two columns, just as on a mileage chart, the two scores meet, and,

eureka!, you find a grade level. Then all you have to do is run out and find

all the children with, say, a 4.6 grade level reading score on standardized tests

-17

e

and give them, and them only, this piece of literature. Isn't that simple? The

Nye translation of Beowulf came out at a 7.6 grade level according to the Dale-

Chall formula.

Dale-Chall is not the only test for grade level, however. There is the SMOG

readability formula, which is computed on the square root of the number of *fords of

three or more syllables in thirty selected sentences; there is the Fry- Graphs which is

computed on the average number of syllables and the average number of sentences

per 100 words. Also, looming large on the horizon are the new Learner Verification

Systems such as the one developed this past year by the California State Department

of Education. These systems determine not only the appropriate grade level of

materials but the performance capability of textbooks to effect measurable behavioral

changes. The potential of this new test for deadening experience with true

literature can easily be imagined.

What is critical, of course, is not vocabulary, sentence length, number of

syllables, or measurable behavioral change, but whether a child cares to know about

what he is reading. Children hunger for quality in writing, just as adults do. In

order to find material childrenimuld1AID to reads I asked dozens of youngsters to read

pieces I liked and tell me vhethwrthey liked them or not, and whether they found

them hard to read, too easy, or just right.

In the hands of real nine-year-olds and not those mythical creatures of the

Dale-Chall tests, Beowulf triumphed because Beowulf, the epic, is simple despite its

archaic words and long sentences, simple because the issues are clear, simple

because the battle is pure. It is not unlike the young man Beowulf himself as

Nye describes him at the time he arrives at Hrothgar's hall vowing to kill the

monster:

18

Beowulf sat down on the steps by the king's throne.His manner was relaxed and easy. Hrothgar could not helpliking this plain young man - there was such an air ofsimplicity about him. He shuddered and touched the scars

on his own face - livid marks made by Crendel's claws -

as he thought what the monster would do to that simplicity.3i

It is precisely that simplicity we must preserve. All art at bottom projects

simplicity; and yet like Beowulf beguiles with its power.

Betty Jane WagnerDepartment of EnglishNational CollegeEvanston, Illinois

19

FOOINOTES

1. (New Yorks Henry Holt, & Co., 1911.7,)

2. Beowulf (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1962).

3. Hosford, p. 18.

14. Robert Nye, Beowulf, A New Telling (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968).

5. J. R. R. Tolkien,of the British AcFlprniited in theby Donald K. 751968).

"Beowulf/ The Monsters and the Critics," Proceedings, MI (Oxford University Press, 1936), pp. 245-95;flWit, A Collection of Critical Essays, edited

LWIToMTliTfr, enrir ers-eire-H,all,:11,1.1,11k

6. Tolkien, app. .7. Richard Wilbur, "Beowulf," Ceremony and Other Poems (New York: Harcourt*

Brace & World, Inc.; London: 'Faber &Ebei-r. rid719148, 19149, 1950), pp. 36-37; reprinted in The Beowulf P_,oet A Collection of Critical editedby Donald K. Fry rig esr-TolThileTsolie177e7-rseyi Prentice -(a 1969),p. 66.

8. Andrew Schiller, Marion Monroe, Ralph Nichols, William Jenkins, and CharlotteMick, eds., Language and How to Use It, Grade Four (Glenview, Illinois:Scott Fbresman and Company, 1969, 1967), pp. 9-114.

9. alblkien, p. 141.

10. Tolkien, p. 18.

11. Eldonna L. Evertts and Byron H. VanRoekel, eds., Coming to Crossroads (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1972, 1966), p. 129.

12. John E. Brewton, Babette Lemon, and Marie Ernst, New Horizons Throughllta_.d:).1.1: and Literature (River Forest, Illinois: T.Mialros., 1962).iCT -Warl-Tarlsen, Anthony Tovatt, Ruth Christoffer Carlsen, and Patricia0. Tovatt, ?Arco Themes in Literature (Now Yorks McGraw-Hill BookCo., 3.969).-MIT6. re er, Writ; Gates, Marion L'Amoreaux, Helen War-denberg, To Turn a Stone, Boston: Ginn and Company, 1973, 1970). ElizabethC. OIDalfInMserritliieman Adventures for Readers, Book 1. (New York:Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968).

13. Theodore Clymer and Helen Wardenberg, eds., To TEE a Stone Thacherls Guide(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1973, 1970), p. 18.

114. Clymer and Wardenberg, p. 18.

15. Carlsen, et. al., p. 149.

16. Car lsen, et. al., p. 1121.

20

17. Carlsen, et. al., p. 433.

18. Carlsen, et. 41., p. 437.

19. Carlsen, et. al., p.

20. Carlsen, et. 41., Perception, Themes in Literature Teacher's Resource Guide

(New York: McGrair-arnWirCo7691-; 5:1"357

21. Daisy M. times and J. Louis Cooper, Fr= Codes to Captains (New lb*: Harper

& ROW, 1964, 1963, 1960), p. 366

22. Nye, pp. 49, 50, and 51.

23. Nye, p. 5'l.

24. Nye, p. 43.

25. Nye, p. 42.

26. Nye, p. 43.

27. Robert Pierce, letter, February 22, 1972.

28. Nye, p. 10.

29. Nye, p. 60.

30. Edgar Dale and Jeanne S. Chan, "A Formula fbr Predicting Readability:

Instructions," Educational Research Bulletin, 27 (1948) s 1=9. 37-54.

31. Nye, p. 33.

21